The Kingdoms

by Natasha Pulley

A voice in his head that didn’t sound like him at all, the one that did numbers and calculations, decided that he was going to screw this man over so far he would end up in Australia.

Then, too soft for Drake to hear, Kite said, ‘I tried to let you go, before. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d forget so quickly.’ ‘What?’ Joe said. ‘What do you mean, before? When?’

Only it wasn’t epilepsy. It was the pillars. It was the future rearranging itself. McCullough had forgotten the presence of a tortoise that was now impossible. Joe must have had a whole life that had become impossible.

‘You can’t call it Tortoise Four because it sounds like you’re trying to say tortes fortes. Strong Pies is – not a name,’ he finished, because he couldn’t think of the English for fundamentally and primordially irritating.

‘If you can taste sand, I think it might be because you’ve got your head in quite a lot of it.’

Fred, who had been rubbing one fingertip around the silver ribbon on Kite’s jacket sleeve. ‘Touching people who you aren’t related or married to is …?’ ‘Creepy, sir. Sorry, sir,’ Fred said, not worried at all. ‘Yes it is,’ Kite said, looking hopeless.

The tortoise sat there too, and the cat, which was a fat fluffy thing everyone claimed was a ratter but whose extremest velocity was an ooze.

‘We can’t have a handsome man with a grudge in a room alone with a senior officer, it’s a nightmare.’

‘Have a cigarette,’ he offered, because in his limited experience, children were instantly impressed by cigarettes. ‘I know we can’t get warm, but they smell of Jamaica. Fools your brain. And you’ll think of waveform equations whenever you smoke one,’ he added brightly. Fred took one, stopped, and then began to laugh. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t recognise you until this very instant.’ ‘What?’ said Joe. Fred was odd, but he wasn’t enough of a holy fool to forget who Joe was.

She was never gentle with him again. It made her feel evil, but when she met other sisters and other mothers, they all said the same thing. You couldn’t forge a sword without hammering it.

It was one of the things Kite loved about living with a woman: they left treasure in odd places round the house.

I suppose you find it shocking that a woman could be that violent. We are violent creatures, but ours is a rage much more accustomed to suppression than the flabby undisciplined version found in men.

‘Your family, Joe—’ ‘You’re my family! You were family before any of them. I’ve missed you even when I didn’t remember you. Everything I’ve done since losing you has been about getting back to you. And I know I’ve left you behind before for other families, but not this time. I can’t do it again.’ He swallowed when he noticed how much he was saying I. ‘Sorry. If you don’t want me to – look, I’d understand if you said you never want to see me again. I didn’t mean to just invite myself.’